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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Using emotion to affect health-related behaviours',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Written in <span title="Introduction to Health Psychology (previously known as Introduction to Human Psychology)">PSYC 1111</span> by <a href="https://y.st./">Alexand(er|ra) Yst</a>, finalised on 2018-09-26',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2018',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	Appealing to emotion can be one of the most effective ways to change someone&apos;s behaviour, be it your own or that of someone else.
	Humans are often a very illogical species, and we rely very heavily on emotion during the decision-making process.
	For some things, we can often be trained to use logic to determine the best outcome instead of giving in to our feelings, but there are many circumstances in which that strategy backfires.
	Instead of using strategies that seem to make the most sense in changing a behaviour, such as trying to reason with yourself or someone else, it often pays to take a different approach.
</p>
<h2>Greed</h2>
<p>
	One of the reading assignments for the week suggests that using money to change someone&apos;s behaviour (Giles, Robalino, McColl, Sniehotta, &amp; Adams, 2014).
	This, of course, appeals to our sense of greed.
	This has proven to be very effective in changing human behaviours, including but not limited to health behaviours.
	Humans have evolved to be naturally greedy on many levels.
	Early in the development of our species, unfettered selflessness likely led to people giving up too much for their companions, leading them not to live long enough to reproduce themselves, yet kleptomaniacs that couldn&apos;t control their urges would have been shunned from the group for the health of the group as a whole.
	It&apos;s likely that these are the reasons humans tend to fall more into the middle.
	Most of us don&apos;t go around stealing, but we also don&apos;t give up everything we have.
	And when it comes to bribes, someone is outright <strong>*giving*</strong> us something, right?
	If you&apos;re bribed to act in a more healthful way and someone finds out you took the bribe, you&apos;re not going to get shunned.
	You&apos;re not exactly being bribed to do the wrong thing or harm anyone, right?
	So there&apos;s no guilt attached.
	This makes monetary rewards for healthful behaviour, being a type of bribe that won&apos;t get you in trouble, highly appealing and effective.
</p>
<p>
	For example, if someone bribed you to go as long as you could without a cigarette, you might end up stopping smoking.
	If you gained five dollar for each day passed without smoking, a longer streak would net you more money.
	You might be able to keep up your strength through the withdrawals and kick the habit entirely.
</p>
<p>
	However, this particular type of behaviour encouragement really only works when trying to influence other people.
	You can&apos;t bribe yourself with money as effectively as you can bribe or be bribed by other people, because when you give yourself money, you haven&apos;t really gained anything.
	Appealing to greed therefore isn&apos;t very effective for encouraging self change.
</p>
<p>
	For some habits, such as our smoking example, there are still at least one way we can appeal to our own greed.
	We can think about how much the cigarettes cost.
	A lot of money can be saved by not smoking.
</p>
<h2>Fear</h2>
<p>
	Many public health campaigns try to use fear as a motivator (Ogden, 2017).
	On the whole, this has been shown to be rather ineffective.
	For example, when presented with anti-smoking propaganda that talks about cancer risks, smokers will often believe they&apos;ll never be one of the ones to get cancer, and that it doesn&apos;t matter if they keep smoking.
	Using fear just isn&apos;t an effective tactic in controlling behaviours.
</p>
<h2>Vanity</h2>
<p>
	Often times, we can be controlled by our own vanity, and this includes controlling our health-related behaviours.
	I&apos;ve never been a smoker, but I&apos;m currently working on losing weight.
	Is it because I&apos;m worried about the multitude of health problems being overweight can cause?
	Nope.
	Not in the slightest.
	I&apos;m going to die eventually anyway, so why should I care if I die a bit ahead of schedule?
	No, what&apos;s motivating me right now is vanity.
	I&apos;m fat, and I&apos;m tired of feeling ugly because of it.
	Thankfully, with some dietary change, I&apos;m showing signs of improvement.
	I&apos;m not sure how much longer this&apos;ll take, but having already seem partial results, I&apos;ve got the strength to continue working on my weight issues.
</p>
<p>
	In our smoking example, vanity applies just as much.
	At least in my local area&apos;s culture, having a cigarette sticking out of your mouth has become recognised as highly unattractive.
	Smoking is also known to cause yellowing of the teeth and ageing of the skin.
	Being a wrinkly, yellow-smiled person with a cigarette sticking out of your mouth just isn&apos;t sexy.
	Why would you want to be that if you have the strength to break the habit?
</p>
<h2>Love</h2>
<p>
	Sometimes we change who we are for the ones we love.
	If your loved ones can&apos;t stand your smoke, you might choose to stop smoking so they won&apos;t be appalled to be around you.
	Unfortunately, this acts as a form of peer pressure, which means it works both ways.
	If you&apos;re the only non-smoker in your family, you might pick up the habit so as not to appear judgemental towards them.
	You might even just pick it up because hanging around with them got you used to and addicted to the smoke they breathe out.
</p>
<h2>Social acceptance</h2>
<p>
	Similarly, health-related habits can be picked up or dropped in the search for social acceptance.
	If your peer group smokes or doesn&apos;t smoke, being recognized and accepted by the group may require you follow suit.
	It&apos;s not always possible to find a group you fit in with as you are.
	Sometimes, people pick up or drop habits to make new friends.
	This, of course, can apply to health-related habits such as smoking.
	If you live in a small town with only one real social group, and that group smokes, there&apos;s a chance you&apos;ll decide to start smoking too just as part of your effort to be a part of the group.
</p>
<h2>Guilt</h2>
<p>
	You&apos;d think guilt would be a powerful influence in deciding our health-related behaviours, but in my experience, id doesn&apos;t actually seem to be.
	For example, your people around you may dislike your smoking because they don&apos;t want to have to breathe it, but this doesn&apos;t seem to affect many smokers.
	I even see smokers go through restaurant drive-throughs with lit cigarettes, which is not only illegal in my area, but is extremely rude to the workers that have to serve these customers and don&apos;t want to breathe in the noxious fumes.
</p>
<p>
	Rather, guilt seems to have a similar effect as fear.
	People block it out to the point that they don&apos;t even seem to notice the annoyance they cause others.
	If anything, most smokers seem like they&apos;re entitled to smoke wherever and whenever they want to with no regards for the rest of us.
	They don&apos;t seem to feel that the rest of us are entitled to clean air to breathe.
	They seem to think they&apos;re justified in making us all pay for their own poor health-related decisions.
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>
	As we can see, appealing to emotions that embrace a change have been shown to be much more effective in affecting behaviours than appealing to emotions that reject a current habit.
	Greed, vanity, love, and social acceptance are all tools that work well in promoting behaviours.
	However, fear and guilt aren&apos;t very effective in getting the desired results.
	People tune these things out and bury them.
</p>
<div class="APA_references">
	<h2>References:</h2>
	<p>
		Giles, E. L., Robalino, S., McColl, E., Sniehotta, F. F., &amp; Adams, J. (2014). The effectiveness of financial incentives for health behaviour change: Systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 9(3): e90347. Retrieved from <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090347"><code>http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090347</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Ogden, J. (2017). The Psychology of Health and Illness: An Open Access Course. Retrieved from <a href="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf"><code>https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf</code></a>
	</p>
</div>
END
);
